Bricks and Mortar Communication Strategy

0:04 Hi, you have done to censure. Wow for you young. This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and I'm here with our next segment on Positively pipe Man with our resident expert in business next step CFO Michael Barberita. How are you fantastic? How you doing? Dean? Doing great? Doing great? I want to hear all about bricks and mortar communications strategy. You know why because back in the nineties or in the two thousands, they said there was going to be no more brick and mortar, And uh, I don't know. I don't feel myself sitting outside right now.

0:58 Ah, oh, you're right, You're absolutely right. So today I'm going to share a communication strategy. It's just a name called bricks and mortar, and it connects with audiences and whether you're speaking to many people or just in a one on one conversation, once you understand it, you'll never communicate the same way again. Now I want you to think about the last presentation or even the last email that truly captivated you. What made it different? Why did it hold your attention when others couldn't. And the answer actually lies in understanding the unspoken question that every single person asks whenever somebody begins communicating with them, and that question is is this for me or not for me?

1:47 That's the question. So let that sink in for a moment, because, whether you're consciously aware of it or not, you're asking this question constantly throughout the day. When you're reading messaging or receiving messaging. You know, when you open an email, you're asking is this for me or not for me? When you scroll through social media posts, you're literally going through it and asking is this for me or not for me? When you're watching a YouTube video, you're asking is this for me or not for me? And so and as communicators, we must answer this question immediately with a resounding yes. But here's where most people go wrong.

2:27 It's not enough to just answer it once. You have to answer it repeatedly throughout your entire message. So let me show you with this situation that I bet you've experienced as well. So imagine your colleague excitedly calls you saying you won't believe what just happened in the meeting with our biggest client, so that the first question is easily answered. This sounds like information that you definitely need or of course you want to listen to. But when your colleague launches into excruciating detail about who sat where, what everybody was wearing, and all sorts of ravan background before getting to the point, what usually happens is you start to get bored. You're checking your phone, you're glancing at your watch, you're mentally drafting your grocery list or whatever, whatever whatever it is that that you're distracted by. But but you know you're wondering, is that you're start to wonder if this is actually for you and why you're listening.

3:27 But here's the breakthrough insight. You can you can have the most impressive features and benefits in the whole wide world. But without what I call mortar, you're just building a pile, not a structure. So in communication, the mortar everything everything that answers that critical question is is this for me? And here are some examples of that situation. You talk about something, and you talk about a benefit, and then you say, here's why it matters to you. That's mortar. And the other thing is you make another point, here's the key point of information. Okay, that's a brick, by the way, The key points of information or the benefits of features. That's those are the bricks, but the mortar is here's what this means for your situation, or you say another point, here's how this will help you specifically.

4:22 And so if you keep putting the mortar with the bricks, that's how you get somebody's attention, because then they'll understand why it's for them and how it applies to them. So it's a fascinating strategy, and it's a fascinating communications strategy. And what I've done with it, I've been using it lately and I got to tell you it's it's worked extremely well, and I finally get attention. I think that's the key. I finally get attention when I when I use the mortar with the brick, and and so with it, I've been just getting just a more attention, simply more attention, whether it's going to a webinar, whether it's going whether it's UH in in the middle of a sales presentation or any type of communication where I'm trying to influence UH.

5:16 I use the brick and mortar strategy and that and and always focusing on what is in it for them and but reinforcing it though Dean that's critical. You know, you can't just talk about the advantage and the benefit. You got to explain why it's important to them. It's the old saying, what's in it for me? Right? Right? So it's a it's a strategy, uh that that I've been using an awful lot lately. I just learned it, maybe I don't know, a couple of months ago, and uh, it's just been a strategy that I've been using and it's been working very well. And I thought i'd share it with your audience today because we're all trying to figure out ways that we can communicate better with prospects in a world that's very hard to get attention.

6:07 Yeah, totally. The other thing I I was just gonna say, I love what you're saying because it is so hard to get people's attention nowadays. And the other thing I do with it, Dean, is I train AI with it so that and you know, I utilize a lot. I train AI on a lot of things. I have, you know, things like my book in there and and uh, in the project knowledge, so to speak. I have my book. I have a lot of communications strategies in there as well, including this one. And so when I ask AI to to write marketing content for me. I make sure I reference the brick and mortar strategy that's in project project Knowledge because that way, uh, the AI will be able to utilize that in making my marketing message. So it's really it can be it can be a in many ways. Uh.

7:02 And so it's something that I wanted to share with your audience today. And how do people communicate with you so that they can get their brick and mortar communications strategy? They could? They could absolutely go to next step CFO dot net. And by the way, uh, they can download a copy of my book Powerful Business Strategies. It's free. They can also go to next step CFO dot net, forward slash contact UH, put there and fill out the contact form. And one thing that I do is I'm always adding additional content to my book, always updating it. And so I love to interview business owners and so uh, if a business owner is interested in a book interview, they just have to go to the contact form on my website, fill out the form and put book interview in the message, and that is it. I'll get back to them with a calendar like nice.

8:00 Well, I'm looking forward to people communicating with you because you are definitely a help to all businesses. And I love that strategy that we just talked about because I don't think people think of that, and what's in for me is so important to them, you know, and they don't care what's in for you. They care what's in it for them, and. All they doing is talking about Without that strategy, all you're doing is talk about features, advantages and benefits, and the customer is getting, you know, a little bored, like in the example I gave you when a colleague was talking about a big client and talking about all the details. That don't matter exactly, you know, Like I think people don't realize that that people don't buy features and benefits, they buy what those features and benefits mean to them. Right, So great advice once again here on Positively pipemin the Powerful Business Strategies segment, and thanks once again Michael for being here with us. Next week you mentioned AI. Next week we're going to talk about using AI.

9:07 There you go, Thank you, thank you, Thank you for listening to the Adventures of Patement on w for CUI Radio.